Wild Mood Swings

The temper tantrums of Spike Jonze's intimate epic and Chilean Sundance winner "The Maid."

No less irritably in need of love than Max, the title character of the new Chilean film “The Maid” is wild thing Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), a 41-year-old live-in housekeeper wearing formal servant’s garb and a perpetual scowl. (Gnashing terrible teeth, indeed.) Tending to the well-off Valdes family of Santiago for 23 years and counting, Raquel hasn’t much power, but what she’s got, she wields — hoarding snacks under her bed, vacuuming outside the eldest daughter’s room to spite the girl’s precious beauty sleep, even doing her best to refuse the family’s gift of a surprise birthday party. Such passive-aggressive behavior takes its toll. When the woman of the house (Claudia Celedón) notices Raquel’s increasingly weary work and calls for extra help in the form of a younger maid, Raquel — anxious to keep her hard-fought rank, such as it is — opts for pure, unadulterated ruthlessness.

From here, one expects director Sebastián Silva to follow the maid’s lead and show no mercy. But he has something very different in mind. After scaring off two supporting housemaids, Raquel finds herself trusting the third, Lucy (Mariana Loyola), who recognizes the lonely woman’s unspoken desire for friendship and heeds the call. Silva lightens up on the claustrophobic framing, and Saavedra — winner of an acting prize at Sundance — reveals her range as well, widening her eyes to show the maid’s surprised delight at having someone wait on her for a change.

How rare it is that a movie loosens its grip for any reason, more so when it grants equal opportunity to pleasure. The terrible claws of Lars von Trier et. al — just in time for Halloween, natch — can wait until next week.

Rob Nelson is our guest critic for the month of October.

“Where the Wild Things Are” opens wide on October 16th; “The Maid” opens in New York on October 16th before a subsequent national rollout beginning in Los Angeles on October 23rd.

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